When it comes to Twitter, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress last November, beats every other US politician hands, nose and elbows down. She has built one of the most engaged followings on Capitol Hill in just eight months and was even appointed to teach social media lessons to her colleagues upon her arrival.

How does she do it? I spend my days analyzing data for the Guardian and helping run our social media accounts, so I’m used to digging into numbers and figuring out what gets people going. And more often than not, it’s the less obvious things that reveal what’s really happening.

Ocasio-Cortez’s Twitter account (@AOC) has more than 3.1 million followers. It has gained more than 2.6 million of these in the last eight months. Before she won her primary in June, beating a powerful 10-term Democratic incumbent, she only had 446,000 followers.

Ocasio-Cortez also has more than 2.1 million followers on Instagram and 500,000 on Facebook, but Twitter is where she really dominates the conversation.

She already has more Twitter followers than the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (2.2 million), and she only just trails Joe Biden (3.3 million).

She may have far fewer followers than Trump (58.2 million), but if you look at her interaction rate, which averages out overall interactions per tweet against the account’s number of followers, it’s 2.8% for the last three months.

That may not sound like much, but to put it in perspective, Donald Trump’s is 0.2%. Barack Obama’s is 0.4%. Hillary Clinton’s is 0.2%. Bernie Sanders’ is 0.09%.

Even when you look at pure, non-weighted engagement, Ocasio-Cortez still punches well above her weight. For example, Trump has 21 times more followers than her. Yet he generated only 2.5 times as many total interactions as she did in January (43.2m compared to 17.5m).

All these numbers are useful for understanding the scale of Ocasio-Cortez’s Twitter popularity, but do little in terms of explaining it. To further understand why they’ve done so well, here’s a brief timeline of her rapid ascent, and the tweets that have defined it:

Ocasio-Cortez introduced herself to many voters with a campaign video in May that ended up going semi-viral. But it was her primary win in June that first gave her a national platform, and this tweet (her biggest in June) set the tone for how she was going to operate.

It quickly established that Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t going to let her critics – whether Republicans or Democrats – shape her narrative. Her tweet is a two-part fact-check. But instead of using cold stats like fact-checks usually do, she provides photographic and anecdotal evidence that’s much more personal and emotive.

She uses Fox News to her advantage (July 2018)

Whether they like it or not, the very fair and balanced people over at Fox News have played a considerable role in Ocasio-Cortez’s success. On top of the all the free airtime they’ve given her, they’ve also provided her with plenty of ammo.

The above graphic in particular sparked a running joke that Ocasio-Cortez would use again: is the Fox News graphics department actually on her side?

She calls Republicans out (August 2018)

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC)

Just like catcalling, I don’t owe a response to unsolicited requests from men with bad intentions.

During a recent talk, the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates asked Ocasio-Cortez when she decides to “dunk on fools”. “Whoever is coming at me in my mentions with a blue check when I haven’t eaten in three hours,” she said. “And until more people start pitching in and holding people to account, I’m just going to let them have it.”

The above tweet was one of the first big examples of her doing this, when she picked apart Ben Shapiro’s strange and expensive debate challenge.

She makes fact-checking fun (September 2018)

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC)

a) The alt-right doesn’t seem to understand the concept of magazine shoots

b) You don’t get to keep the clothes, duh

c) I don’t “pretend” to fight for a Living Wage & Medicare for All. I do it.

This was Ocasio-Cortez’s most popular tweet in September and, just like her biggest one in June, she’s setting the record straight.

Targeting the far right is always going to be a popular move on Twitter. But it’s her use of “slaying lewks” that douses her already fire tweet with the most flammable thing on the internet: relatability. She speaks the language of her young fans, and they’ve probably never seen anything like it from a politician before.

This is what really sets her apart in Congress. Most politicians are elected to represent normal people yet have to hire consultants for advice on how to speak to millennials. Remember when Hillary Clinton told people to “Pokémon Go to the polls”?

It should also be noted that September was the month Ocasio-Cortez took her Fox-trolling to new heights:

It’s no surprise that, in an age where authenticity matters more than ever, Ocasio-Cortez has done so well. Her story of growing up in a working-class family and bartending a year before she won her primary has become a powerful part of her appeal.

It’s not the sole reason she’s popular, but rather acts as a shield around her beliefs. Republicans have tried to dismantle this story as much as possible, and you can see why. After they’ve spent decades trying to paint liberals as out-of-touch elites, it’s one of the biggest threats to their entire narrative.

There’s no magic to Ocasio-Cortez’s use of our modern-day hieroglyphs, but what’s notable is how you rarely notice them – they never jar or stand out. Like the rest of her language they have a natural flow, and help crystallize her air of authenticity.

This tweet was Ocasio-Cortez’s biggest in December. In it, she contrasts her working-class background with her new job in Congress, and taps into people’s huge frustrations with the healthcare system.

Intentionally or not, it proves she’s still one of us, and isn’t going to give Congress a free pass now she’s part of it. There’s not much to dislike if you’re a young, leftwing American who values authenticity and a willingness to hold power to account.

She can dance and make a political point at the same time – January 2018

January was @AOC’s biggest month so far, with the account adding a million new followers. A great deal of this momentum was generated by this one tweet, which got over 160k retweets and 787,000 likes.

The video shows her dancing to Edwin Starr’s song War (the one that goes “what is it good for?”). It was a tongue-in-cheek response after she was “outed” for dancing in a spoof music video in college.

The original footage was posted by a strange, seemingly rightwing account looking to undermine her. “Here is America’s favorite commie know-it-all acting like the clueless nitwit she is,” read the post. The account was later deleted, raising the possibility that it was planted by someone on the left who knew it would do wonders for her.

Either way, it became the new focal point for the left’s battle with the right over Ocasio-Cortez, and a huge news story.

The idea that all Republicans were mocking her for dancing quickly took hold, despite limited examples of them doing so. But the smear did chime with many of the right’s pearl-clutching attacks on her, and the leftwing backlash became part of a wider cry of frustration over her treatment by Republicans.

Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet was the climax of the whole ordeal and even by her standards was a surprise. Politicians have danced before; Obama was particularly adept at it. But has anyone ever done it in a way that is both entertaining and makes a deft political point?

The tweet is really a perfect example of why Ocasio-Cortez has done so well on Twitter. She doesn’t just respond to news or release statements like most politicians – she creates her own content and makes her own news, in an unpredictable and authentic way.

And just when you think you’ve seen all the possible fact-checks, clapbacks, and details from her past, she comes out dancing.